Ever since the 7-Eleven migrant worker scandal broke in 2015, there has been a regular flow of stories emerging about the systemic abuse of Australia’s various migrant worker programs.
The issue culminated last year when the Senate Education and Employment References Committee released a scathing report entitled A National Disgrace: The Exploitation of Temporary Work Visa Holders, which documented the widespread abuses of Australia’s temporary visa system for foreign workers.
On Monday night, ABC’s 7.30 Report ran a segment on the modern slavery occurring across Australia involving foreign workers (article here). Today, labour hire company Grouped Property Services has been busted by the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) for underpaying foreign workers and treating them like “slaves”. From The AFR:
A Sydney labour hire firm has been ordered to pay more than $670,000 over its use of a sophisticated phoenixing operation to underpay foreign workers and treat them like “slaves”.
The Federal Court on Wednesday ordered Grouped Property Services, which provides cleaning services, to pay near-record penalties of $447,300 and backpay of $223,244 to 49 employees after a three-year Fair Work Ombudsman investigation exposed the scheme.
Former GPS director Rosario Pucci, an undischarged bankrupt whom Justice Anna Katzmann found was “intimately involved” in the exploitation, set up a second-tier shell companies which engaged cleaners under ABNs to avoid paying minimum wages and entitlements…
Justice Katzmann found Rosario’s conduct was “shameful” and that some of the workers were “treated by GPS as slaves”, with others threatened or fired if they had the “temerity” to ask for outstanding wages…
The Ombudsman uncovered a pattern of successive GPS-related “labour hire” companies going into liquidation, leaving few or no assets to pay former employees, who would be forced to seek payments from the government’s Fair Entitlements Guarantee scheme.
The widespread rorting continues. Indeed, there appear to entire sectors and business lines now fastened to visa rorting as their business plans.
At least the FWO is taking action against some of the rogue employers.
